On 1/6/2025 at 8:22 PM, Kaboki said:

Lets see how long the positivity in this thread last

1) The MSFS flight planner has received three upgrades since its release

2) In 2020, the Citation Longitude was just a cockpit with an outside model.

In 2024 it has a nicely modeled interior, and you can, during your walkaround, open almost anything that can be opened. 

Right there, I got my money' worth. 

19 hours ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

Interesting that Microsoft now owns 2 of the best-selling Flight Sims.

Beside that, the walk around feature allows me to explore (yea I know I could use the drone)  my cool airports.  Great for that immersion aspect.

dd

For many years Flight Simulator was by far their most popular gaming franchise...  I think it was 3rd most popular in sales behind their Operating System and MS Office at one point...

 

19 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

1) The MSFS flight planner has received three upgrades since its release

2) In 2020, the Citation Longitude was just a cockpit with an outside model.

In 2024 it has a nicely modeled interior, and you can, during your walkaround, open almost anything that can be opened. 

Right there, I got my money' worth. 

My last flight in MSFS2020 was perfect but booooering in direct contrast to my exciting flights in MSFS 2024 - the new kid on the block.

Free Flighter now but will get into the career thing later I guess.

Give it a shot and have fun.

 

dd

 

 

On 1/12/2025 at 4:53 AM, Cpt_Piett said:

I'm having a blissful flight along the Dutch coast this morning, everything looks quite nice in the morning light. 

I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when. I saw this. It looks incredible!

You know, there's this phenomena that seems to happen almost with the release of any new sim.....

I remember the almost insane excitement for 2020 when it was just pictures, bootleg videos, and some testers sworn to keep mum.... (Remember the watermarks?)

Then it actually arrived, and the brickbats came out, with many of the same who were loudest then, back to throw newly gathered stones at 2024, though admittedly the botched launch provided much more ammunition.

Back then, I felt like one of the people trying to keep a sense of balance, (I think some call it a shill, or white knight) and I remember making the prediction here that many of the loudest negative voices would eventually be claiming that you would only be able to pry 2020 from their cold, dead hands.

Fast forward a few years and oh look, whaddayaknow!

So now here we are piling on 2024, and it's sometimes hard sometimes to hold back a (metaphorical) yawn....

I wonder how long it will take this time....?

For me, MSFS 2024 got right many things:

The basics: it does not crash and not stutter. Performance is as good as before. It makes much better use of available hardware. The graphics quality span between low and ultra is much bigger, which means capabilities of good PC's are utilized much better.

The visuals: it looks stunning. The AI generated mountains and rocks are vastly improved over what we had before. The lightning is much more realistic. The colors are heavily improved, like the streets are no longer greenish. But also details, e.g. have you noticed that the sun and the moon are now sized correctly? Or the highly improved quality of the asphalt textures for runways and taxiways? The runways have really fine and nice textures (2020 had far too coarse texture scaling), differently colored areas are depicted separately and even repair patches and the rubber marks are visible. Looking at MSFS2020 videos like this one https://youtu.be/SWY8nGa6rjE?t=1242 I am becoming more and more certain, that I won't be able to enjoy 2020 again. Or, to use @Bobsk8's prefered analogy, why should I bother with VHS when I can have something so much better?

The core flight simulation aspects: better and more natural flight modelling. Better taxi behavior. EFB nicely integrated into all aircrafts providing a common workflow without tool or media breaks. The charts and the flight planner. The WT avionics brought to another level (like the Vision Jet safe return feature).

The weather: MSFS 2024 live weather beats 2020 Active Sky in most departements and avoids the glaring disadvantage of the lacking weather fronts. The detailed clouds which MSFS 2020 lost in one of the SU's are back. Sunsets and sunrises look more realistic. And this is my personal favorite: flying during the blue hour. The ambiance and the atmosphere is catched so gorgeously that 2020 really pales in comparison.

41 minutes ago, fsiscool said:

For me, MSFS 2024 got right many things:

The basics: it does not crash and not stutter. Performance is as good as before. It makes much better use of available hardware. The graphics quality span between low and ultra is much bigger, which means capabilities of good PC's are utilized much better.

The visuals: it looks stunning. The AI generated mountains and rocks are vastly improved over what we had before. The lightning is much more realistic. The colors are heavily improved, like the streets are no longer greenish. But also details, e.g. have you noticed that the sun and the moon are now sized correctly? Or the highly improved quality of the asphalt textures for runways and taxiways? The runways have really fine and nice textures (2020 had far too coarse texture scaling), differently colored areas are depicted separately and even repair patches and the rubber marks are visible. Looking at MSFS2020 videos like this one https://youtu.be/SWY8nGa6rjE?t=1242 I am becoming more and more certain, that I won't be able to enjoy 2020 again. Or, to use @Bobsk8's prefered analogy, why should I bother with VHS when I can have something so much better?

The core flight simulation aspects: better and more natural flight modelling. Better taxi behavior. EFB nicely integrated into all aircrafts providing a common workflow without tool or media breaks. The charts and the flight planner. The WT avionics brought to another level (like the Vision Jet safe return feature).

The weather: MSFS 2024 live weather beats 2020 Active Sky in most departements and avoids the glaring disadvantage of the lacking weather fronts. The detailed clouds which MSFS 2020 lost in one of the SU's are back. Sunsets and sunrises look more realistic. And this is my personal favorite: flying during the blue hour. The ambiance and the atmosphere is catched so gorgeously that 2020 really pales in comparison.

Yes, but apart from all that, how is it better? 😉

46 minutes ago, fsiscool said:

The basics: it does not crash and not stutter. Performance is as good as before. It makes much better use of available hardware. The graphics quality span between low and ultra is much bigger, which means capabilities of good PC's are utilized much better.

Looking at MSFS2020 videos like this one https://youtu.be/SWY8nGa6rjE?t=1242 I am becoming more and more certain, that I won't be able to enjoy 2020 again. Or, to use @Bobsk8's preferred analogy, why should I bother with VHS when I can have something so much better?

I can see that the ground textures look blurry in that video, and there are major stutters on final approach. I do not know if that is a consequence of the video editing or not, but I do know that neither of those apply on my Jurassic Park PC. I also do not experience CTDs, although that may be due to the fact that my flights are so short that the simulator does not have enough time to work out how to do it

On a serious note, sometimes it does not matter whether the next generation looks or performs better. If the current generation simulator is working fine, looks good, and performs great......that is enough.

Edited January 16, 20251 yr by Christopher Low

2 hours ago, fsiscool said:

For me, MSFS 2024 got right many things:

...

The core flight simulation aspects: better and more natural flight modelling. Better taxi behavior. EFB nicely integrated into all aircrafts providing a common workflow without tool or media breaks. The charts and the flight planner. The WT avionics brought to another level (like the Vision Jet safe return feature).

The weather: MSFS 2024 live weather beats 2020 Active Sky in most departements and avoids the glaring disadvantage of the lacking weather fronts. The detailed clouds which MSFS 2020 lost in one of the SU's are back. Sunsets and sunrises look more realistic. And this is my personal favorite: flying during the blue hour. The ambiance and the atmosphere is catched so gorgeously that 2020 really pales in comparison.

Bang on! Even if none of the visual fidelity improvements were ever done, I'd still be all over 2024 for the core simulation improvements alone.

2020 is still on my system for the times when I need a more stable experience or need to fly certain 3rd party aircraft not compatible/native to 2024 yet. But man oh man, the amount of time I'm spending in 2024 vs 2020 is like 90% / 10% or even more.. and that is despite the bugs (which are not significant on my system for free flight). After a few months and a couple of SUs I can see 2024 taking up 100% of my time and 2020 likely uninstalled.
 

Edited January 16, 20251 yr by lwt1971

Not sure if it has already been mentioned, but the cliff mapping in 2024 is a nice improvement!

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

Looking at MSFS2020 videos like this one https://youtu.be/SWY8nGa6rjE?t=1242 I am becoming more and more certain, that I won't be able to enjoy 2020 again

That video is a bad representation of MSFS 2020. I have never experienced blurriness like that...

I did not post that comment. Can you please correct that mistake?

Goodbye 2020! We love you! 😀

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Goodbye 2020! It's about time you left ☹️

Look at the landing and replays from V1-Simulations.

For those who don't think 2024 has improved flight model and ground handling, this real world pilot disagrees with you.  

19 hours ago, Krakin said:

I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when. I saw this. It looks incredible!

The difference in terrain resolution is obvious in that screen shot.  A great advancement over 2020.